Nightscape

Warning: Graphic Depictions Ahead.

Father always told me to keep my eyes on the horizon. 

At the edge, where the earth and the darkness of the night meet, is where we go, every night, verge of dying, to ensure that humanity sees another day of light. 

Those creatures, the shade, the ephemeral beings that came from outside the nightscape, were a threat to all of humanity, Father told me. 

Keep your eyes on the horizon, for when the sun falls and the sky blends day and night, and the waters solidify, it is our time to go, blades drawn, to slay the shades that would tear us all asunder the moment we close our eyes. 

The shades, Father always tells me, are brutal, maddened, merciless creatures. He's witnessed them tear humans to pieces, playing with their entrails before devouring them. They'll play with bodies and parade around in corpses. They'll bathe in their blood and pick them apart while still alive. The shades will do anything to humans to satiate their own bloodlust and boredom. 

This is why we study the blade, our only companions. 

There is only home, the yard, and the nightscape. 

I have been going with Father into the Nightscape for as long as I can remember.  

I have held a blade for as long as I can remember. 

I have known how to kill a shade, for as long as I can remember. 

Vertically, I was taught. Horizontal cuts are easier for them to regenerate or avoid. It may be more difficult and leave the wielder more open, but cuts up and down get the job done. Up and down. 

You must watch for their claws, their most dangerous weapons. Their claws will tear right through you, eviscerating your organs and your soul. You must deflect those with your blade, and guard them with your life. 

But those are not as dangerous as their wails. Their screeching within the nightscape can burst your ears and drive you mad much like a siren. You must cut at their heads when they open them to wail. 

But those are not as dangerous as their appetites. For even if you get past the assault to your ears, you must take care not to be bitten. Their mouths contain a deadly concoction of venom and bacteria, and even a single scratch will spread the pestilence through your body, amputation being the key savior. You must guard against their fangs with the broadest of blade. 

But none of that is as dangerous as letting their bodies sit upon cleaving them, for they do not rot nor decay. Left to the devices of the night, their remains will regroup and consummate and reform into something far worse than a single shade. This, Father says, is something I should never wish to see. I should take vital care never to find myself unfortunate enough to witness this, Father says. 

For as long as I can remember, until I can no longer remember, I will go into the Nightscape with father to slay the shades, and I will do so until the day I die. 

That is what Father always told me. 

Father always told me the steps to destroy a shade, so that it can no longer merge with the night. Once a being is struck down, it is never truly dead, until any trace of it is eradicated from existence. 

We'd pull our haul from the darkness, dragging into the daylight, each mass of shade squirming and going inert upon yielding to sunlight. 

Skinning, tanning, and dismembering, those are the steps to end a shade. They must be chopped to pieces, exposed to the sun, and observed. 

Unwatched shades become missing problems. 

We'd stare until the sun came up, and made sure that the blobs of dark matter faded from existence, dissolving in the light. 

They'd fizzle away, popping and smoldering into ether, as if cursing our existences until they were no longer of mortal plane. 

Those were the steps that father taught me.  

Father always told me that to ensure that we see another day, we must polish ourselves and our blades to glint in the sun. 

Every day, upon our rising at noon, I would find Father already practicing in the midday sun. 

Stroke, Stroke, Stroke. Pristine swings from overhead, from the waist, from every angle, father would swing his blade and cleave the air, the essence of the world. 

I always strove to match that bladework, but father always had words of critique. 

Too low.  

Too firm. 

Too shallow. 

Too wide. 

Each swing was a cut that would end a life, either our target's or our own. The only guarantee of survival was a form perfected. Divine. Without equal. 

The Shades are fluid beasts. Cut them with too much tension, and the blade does not cleave. They dent and regrow, and strike back with as foul a blow as you would need to kill one yourself. 

Strike them too softly and uncleanly, and they wrap around your weapon like a haze, threatening to curse you and your bloodline for eternity. 

Like we already were. 

We would practice upon the shoreline, the calm waves of water that would lap and ebb and freeze upon the night. The ocean that brought peace by day, brought dread by night. 

That was why we were stationed here, away from civilization. Its protectors. From borders beyond. 

Standing in the waves which carried the stench of death in the darkness, but the calm of life in the day. 
 

We lived here, breathed here, fought here, and would die here. 

That was the duty of our bloodline, Father told me. 

Father always told me that the next night will always be the worst. Never knowing if the next strike at your back is your last. 

That night, his words rang true, as two beasts lunged at me from behind, while I pierced at one from the front. 

Father would tell me that those were excuses, and to use the eyes which did not look, to see what I could not see. 

Occasionally he would be cryptic, collect himself, and instead become straightforward. 

Use your mind to see what your eyes cannot, he said. Sense your surroundings beyond what you look at. 

He said that to me, as I lay in bed, face down, as he stomped his heel against my shoulders and tore the remnants of the shade from my back. Like ripping molten lead from the inside of my skin. 

The agony of having shades removed from your skin was only a dozen times worse than being struck by one. And being bitten and consumed by one was a dozen times worse than that, Father told me. 

Father always told me that it was a necessity, and that one day, I would need do the same for my son, as I screamed in agony until I passed out. Same as it always went. 

Father always told me that in order to remain a perfect being, all that which surrounds you must be pure. Your space, your atmosphere, must be pristine, as sharp as your blade and as honed as your mind. 

I'd awoken to the sound of the pail plunking at my bedside, mop against the sill, and father working on scrubbing the woodwork to a sheen. 

We'd clean everything spotless, twice a week. Father would say that the cleaning was for the same reason we practice: to keep ourselves sharp. 

But it was a reassurance. A distraction from the purpose of ensuring that no globs of shade had become distended in the nooks of the home. 

Father always told me, whenever he felt I was unfocused or lax, the story of how his father had passed. 

One day, the shade, one small piece of it, had lodged itself in his father's mind. Neither of them had noticed, until a few days later, when it burst in an episode. My ancestor had gone mad, and begun to morph into the very beings that the two had been destined to ward off. It cleaved at his sanity like a dagger through his skull, and Father told me that he'd watched his father unsheathe his own blade, and dig it into his own eye, a last attempt at its own mercy. 

Father had watched the man he'd been raised by stare at him with great resolution and faith. As his mouth tore itself from his head, and his body shredded apart like tearing paper, he looked Father in the eye with the last glimmer of his own humanity, fully believing that Father would understand what he had to do. 

This house we lived in, father had built by himself. After the house that he and his father had lived in was razed to the ground. 

Father had sunk his blade in the patriarch's temple, twisting to ensure that the remnants of his brain were minced into liquid, nothing that the shades could use, and like any other enemy, struck down and dismembered his father to pieces. 

He ran to the back, grabbed the axe we used for chopping wood, and cleaved the remains into nothing, and set fire to the entire house.  

When the sun arose, a vassal from the humanity had come for their monthly supply and provisions, only to find a solitary young man standing over a smoldering pile. 

That day, father became Father. 

One day, I would have to kill him myself. The shade would take over. Or he would go mad. Or there would simply be mercy in providing death by my own hand. 

That's what Father always told me. 

Father always told me that humanity does these things to survive. To continue, to propagate the species, we must do things. 

He told me this while he ravaged a girl younger than I. Till she bled and screamed and cursed his name, his brutality. As he did, reveling in joy as he did with all other sacrifices we were provided.

He had his way with her until she frothed at the mouth and her eyes rolled into the back of her head. Until she screamed so hard that her voice split and crackled like crumpled paper and blood oozed from her lips. 

Until he instructed me to disassemble and break down the body. 

Same as all the other beasts. 

Same as all the rest of them. 

Same as we always had. 

Same as Father always told me. 

Father always told me to trust him. 

Not anyone else. 

Not the people who came from town to deliver goods or provide maintenance. Not the women that prostrated before he had his way and castrated them. Not the beings of the dark. 

Not even me. Father told me only to trust father. 

Never to trust dreams or visions. 

Never to trust voices or questions. 

Never to trust feelings or omens. 

When people came to the door, he would tense his fists and respond with hostility. Barking at the door and biting in response to intrusive queries such as "is this the Shadeslayer's residence?" or "we've brought supplies, are you available?" and "If you don't open this door this instant I'll kill you where you stand you son of a hundred bastards, what have you done with my daughter?" 

No matter what strangers tried to sell us, or offer us, or ask us, or challenge us, father would rave at them like the very beasts that spat at us in the dark, until they left in agitation or fear or both. 

And once they were gone, father would continue his madness, spitting epithets to the ether. 

It was always other people who sent him mad. Never the beasts which were built to drive sanity from man. 

Father would awaken from slumber every so often, wailing of visions. Things he saw, certain that legends had foretold. 

Scornfully screaming into the night of the end of days: the world engulfed in burning shade, the consequence of his rest. A failure becoming of his own humanity. 

I would lie awake until the cursing stopped, until father screamed himself back to sleep. 

In the morning, Father would awaken, same as always, and speak with the same tonal, Fatherly wisdom that he was known for. 

I never spoke of the episodes. 

Because Father never heard them. 

Father always told me to let the ephemeral screeching serve as reminder. 

The reason we slept during the day and fought during the night, was twofold. Not only were we the only true bastions of defense, but we were strengthened by blood to withstand that scorn. 

The howling of the damned, those we felled and killed, beast and man alike, cursed us from beyond the shadow. 

One task we would take to, as the sun began its last quarterly descent towards the horizon, was digging up the pile. 

The veneer of dirt, always bloating wider across the landscape, grew whenever we had another human corpse to dispose. 

Salesman too forward. Escorts too loud. Cadavers washed upon the shore, too intact. 

We would unearth the pile again and again, dumping more remains into the growing mounds of decaying flesh in the pit. The cover of dirt did little to mask the stench, but we were surrounded by that very smell everywhere in the nightscape. One hardly noticed it after the years. 

Sometimes there would be motion somewhere within the pile. Father would stake through, stabbing at the movement with a pitchfork, until the movement died. Dead as the mound. 

Occasionally, I would ask if the source of grudges came from those we buried. From the shades we'd stomped into dust, to the townspeople we'd slain in disagreement, to the escorts we'd shown the path to hell after father had had his way. 

To learn to sleep, to embrace the shrieking of those we had slain, to let it serve not as a siren, but as a lullaby. 

Our lives as destined. 

Father was right. His father had been wrong, and he was wrong because Father was right. 

Father always told me to pay attention to my senses. 

Not to trust them, but to pay them mind. 

They'd provide information that could be found nowhere else. 

The presence of beings behind oneself. The turning of the days and perturbance on the wind. 

The shifting of normality. 

It was two minutes earlier than midnight when the seas froze and the darkness encroached. 

That was the first time I ever watched father sweat. 

He told me, it was the first time in his entire life of forty one years, that the darkness had arrived even one second away from the turning of the clocks of day to day. 

He cursed the skies, sprinting off into the dark. Without me. 

Before I could call him back, his rage and bloodthirst had dashed off far ahead. Beyond my sight. 

That was the Father I always stood behind. 

Father always told me that if needed, we would consume the shade. 

Always as a last resort. Convincing ourselves that it was not to satiate the tearing hunger, but to eradicate the foul creatures when no other method sufficed. 

This, he told me, as he crunched through the squishy mass of black so hard that his teeth fissured and cracked like splintered logs. 

Father stared me straight in the eye, and chomped the carcass to pieces. It bubbled and convulsed with epithets at our very existence, and took being the prey as being challenged. 

It dove into father's throat, and he clutched at his own neck, clawing it enough to shred stone into gravel. 

His face turned blue, and black, and white, and colors I cannot name. 

He looked me in the eye, silently pleading. 

His voice, gone with the sins and salvations he'd provided and displayed to me our lives together, stared through my soul. 

Telling me that if I was worth anything close to the blade I held, that I'd know what to do with it. 

For the first time in my life, I did not want to listen to Father. 

He lurched forward, his face crashing into the solid water, reverberating across the ocean like a steel bell. 

Father reached up, his hands no longer at his neck, for it had been reduced to nothing, and reached for mine. 

As if to say, to kill myself, if I were to be so useless. 

I could not see, blinded by tears, and drew my blade, and leapt backwards, as Once My Father lunged forth at me, his only source of sustenance to ward off the famine of his lifetime. 

Though my sight was robbed by the emotion I'd been instructed to discard since I'd learned to listen, I swung true with violence, and struck down Once My Father, again and again, until there was nothing but oozing black and puddle upon the cold nightscape. 

Father always told me that you must embrace the hurt. Let it become you, and you become invincible. 

Even in death, father died as he lived, biting down the pain. 

I had awoken to see Father hung from the rafters of our house. His body cold and grey and limp. As if strung along for spectacle for days on end. Not as if it had occurred over single night. 

Shocking, not to see him dead, but to see him dead in any fashion besides slain. 

Father would not hang himself. 

Whether seeing or sensing my realization, the corpse twitched, falling from the ceiling. 

The body crumpled, a limp sack of bone and aged skin, sagging in sections as it mimicked a human rising to its feet, and stood to face me. Mouthing some kind of words in an attempt to commune. 

It grew frustrated, clearly not used to the human act of speech, and began screeching, flailing and bashing its face directly into the floor. The face of Father no longer, it became mutilated and torn and smashed open. A semblance of recognition. Exposed skull and face and the insides behind what people are supposed to look like. 

He shoved his grip into his own maw, clamping on the bottom end of his jaw, and tore at it like ripping open a gourd of fruit.  

No air escaped his lungs, no voice of pain, only the sounds of blood and ripping of sinew and muscle crackled as the red liquid gushed from the torn skin. Viscous and flowing, until the face became two. 

Jaw detached and eyes glowing hollow, the walking death lunged at me, and without hesitation, I struck it clear in half, as I would any beast. 

This one had not seen that I had steeled myself to kill Father once before, so it knew not the resolve I had to do it many times again. As many as necessary. 

I cut and cut. 

Until there is nothing left in this house but me. 

I see. 

This is what Father always told me not to trust. 

Father always told me never to forget what lies inside. That every time we step out towards the horizon, we become closer to our enemy than we do ourselves. 

I step past his dangling corpse to wash my face in the bathroom, and am greeted by the sight of black lightning engraved within my face. My right eye's color is absent, the white now too dark for black to be a sufficient description. 

Where my eye once lay, now exists a void. 

- 

Outside, there is no usual sun. It is a dark unlike any I have ever seen. 

The sun is a blinding black, and the sky, as daylight it should be, is absent to every point reaching up to the horizon. The creatures of the day are silent, and the creatures of the night are as quiet as they always are, before I make my move. 

Is this what Father saw, in all those women? In all that wasted blood? 

The nightscape is the same color as always. Same time as always. Nothing ever changes. 

Except me. 

- 

The darkness looks so inviting. Welcoming me to the bloodbath. 

It is darker than ever before, the shade grown by the illumination of the burning house I step away from.  

I have no need of a shelter. 

The fear I have held at bay since the first night I descended into this hellscape has been replaced by an apprehensive lust, an anxious, suffocating thirst for killing. A feast for the psyche and a banquet of the shade. 

I am so, so hungry. 

For the first time, I am excited to enter the Nightscape. 

Father told me many things. 

But not how to handle this. 

Father never taught me everything.